Californian Girl
by Giang Tien
Summary: Set in All that Glitters. After a new girl moves into Stonehill, Pennsylvania, strange things happen. A new animal, a new threat, a new stone. The three- four plus Ozzie the Talking Ferret- are in for a surprise. Who knew a beach girl could cause so much trouble since she moved in? DISCONTINUED
1. Chapter 1

_Home for Magic_

_Book One_

_Californian Girl_

_Chapter One_

"Oi! Ngai, wake up!" Her mother rapped sharply on Ngai's door.

Said sleepy girl moaned, and pulled the covers back over her head.

Her mother yelled something in Vietnamese, and Ngai groaned and pushed off the covers and swung her legs over of her bed. Her very naturalistic bed.

In fact, her room was completely nature-fied. The paint on her walls were an evergreen green, and the carpet was cream, like sandy colored. Her down-comforter was dark green with leaf designs. She had a giant room. Her own bathroom, private mind her nosy friends, and a walk in closet. Her mother was a jeweler/jewelry designer for Tiffany and Co., so they were extremely well off.

A crystal chandelier that hung above her bed lit up as she hit the on switch. Ngai rubbed her eyes, and went through the daily morning routine.

Wash face, brush teeth, brush hair, and dress.

Ngai dressed in her usual tights, a dark mocha brown, a v-neck, orange in color, and walked with socked feet down the stairs.

Her family were typical Vietnamese. No shoes inside the house, and neat/clean/germ-free freaks.

"Here," her mother placed a bowl of fresh rice porridge in front of her.

Ngai saluted her thanks and dug in. As per-usual, her father was already at work. Her father, Dr. Anthony Hoang, was a rehab. He specialized in car-accident/ Plane-crash victims.

"Thanks Mama," Ngai said, and put her bowl in the sink.

"Mhmm. Remember, try to go make some friends before school, kay?" Her mother said worriedly.

Ngai groaned.

She used to live on the California coast, she grew up there. She was the popular girl, nice and polite, the star. Now, when her mother got a call from her boss that her talents were needed in Stonehill, Pennsylvania.

She moved during the beginning of summer, and tearfully bid goodbye to all her friends, teachers, relatives, everyone.

Ngai ground out, "Fine." After moving, she really didn't want to make anymore friends. She was tired of this, and just about ready to die forever available and friendless.

"Bye mom, I'll be heading out now," she walked to the giant mahogany double doors, and slipped on her lace up boots. As she bent over, and her long mid-back dark coffee brown hair obscured her face, her expression darkened. Ngai's bangs that reached down to her chin dangled.

She stood up, and slipped outside.

While walking down the street, she crossed her arms sourly.

_Ugh... Why me? _She groaned inwardly.

She didn't notice she began to head down Arrowhead Park, in her own musing. She accidentally bumped into a redheaded-girl with bright hazel eyes carrying a large stack of papers.

"Oh geez! I'm so sorry!" Ngai's eye's widened and she jumped.

The other girl stumbled and almost dropped her papers. She looked over at Ngai with shock and said, "Oh my gosh! I'm so sorry! Are you alright?"

"Yeah. Just startled," Ngai confessed.

"Well, I'm glad that- Ah!" The girl stumbled and the stack of paper wavered in her arms.

Ngai lunged for the half of papers that fell to the floor in a baseball dive and caught them just in the nick of time.

Ngai stood up and straightened the papers. "Here, let me help you. Where are you going?"

"To Ravenswood Manor."

"Alright, I think I've heard of it before. It's in Ravenswood Preserve, right?" She jerked her head in the direction of the woods in front of them.

"Yeah. I'm Emily Fletcher."

"I'm Ngai Hoang."

"Ngai Hoang?" Emily cocked her head. "That sounds foreign."

"It is. Ngai means herb in Vietnamese. I'm Vietnamese. Anyway, its a boy's name, but originally my grandma who named me thought I was a boy when I was born a boy, so when she found out I was a girl, she freaked!"

Emily laughed. "Hey, how did you know about the reserve?"

"Well, before I moved to Stonehill, I decided to do a little research about this place," Ngai confessed.

"Oh, really?"

Both girls were heading down the path through the bright and cheery woods, and st the metal gate, two other girls were waiting for them.

"Oh yeah, you've got some mad reflexes. How?" Emily inquired as they neared the gates.

"Many years of Tae Kwon Do. Korean Martial Arts. My 'Uncle' was the master, so I trained till Second Degree black," Ngai grunted and shifted her load.

"Em!" the first girl, dark eyed and dark haired, called out to Emily, waving her hand. She wore black jeans and knee high boots, similar to Ngai's. A beige vest went over her black long-sleeved.

"Hey!" The second girl waved. She had long blonde hair and bright icy-blue eyes. Decked out in a pick sweatshirt, pink jeans, pink-and-white sneakers, and a pink baseball cap burned Ngai's retna's.

Ngai liked pink and all, but this was just... severe mis-wear of the color pink.

"Hey!" Emily called to them, and as they were infront of the gates, the dark haired girl took Emily's stack of papers, and the blonde took Ngai's.

"Hey. I'm Kara Davies, the mayor's my dad," she flipped her long blonde hair.

Ngai slightly scowled, "Good for you."

"Hey, Ngai, I'd like you to meet Adriane, she's my best friend," Emily waved over Ngai.

Adriane and Kara grabbed a briefcase, sitting at Kara's feet, and put the papers in. They snapped it shut and Kara took it. Adriane held out her hand.

"Hi, I'm Adriane. I'm guessing you're Ngai, right?"

"Yeah," Ngai shook the other dark haired girl's hand with a tentative smile.

"C'mon. Lets go to the manor," Kara swung the briefcase like a little girl.

"Fine, tommorow then Ngai?" Emily turned around and asked her.

"Sure, where should I meet you?"

"Here, at the gates?" Emily asked.

"Sure," Ngai said as the turned around, and left the girls behind, heading home.

* * *

If Ngai was paying attention, she would've hever slid into the gully full of stones.

She was thinking about the three girls, about whether they could be friends.

In her absent mind musings, she tripped on a stone, and fell off the trail. She tumbled off the hillside, dirtying her tights and the dust flying in her face with loose debris, the wind whipping in her hair as she slid down the hill. She slid from her side, trying to slow her descent, and hand raw from rubbing against the harsh soil while she slid down. As she neared the ground, she lost control and collided with a large boulder. The last thing she saw before she blacked out, feeling sticky hot blood in her hair, was a large, pure black, melanistic cat, resembling a tiger, swooped down.

* * *

AN: I think this is one fic I'll be sticking with for sure. Anyway, I noticed a few things about the Avalon series. First off, how could Emily possible have Ariel perch on her arm without mauling it to death? Snowy owls have exceptionally sharp talons, meant for crushing slicing. Emily would have her arm mauled. She would have to wear a gauntlet. For those non-falconers, gauntlets are the gloves falconers wear to prevent the raptor (or bird of prey) from harming their arm.

Also, in book seven, Carolyn mention black wolves are not native in Pennsylvania. Black wolves are not a separate species. In fact, they are just melanistic wolves. Dreamer would most likely be a gray wolf, if he was not a mistwolf. Most melanistic wolves are gray wolves. Any species of wolf could be melanistic. Be it red, arctic, or Mexican. Any wolf could be black.

Melanistic, for those who don't know, is a term used for animals born with a pigment that makes thier fur black. In fact, Black Panthers are not a species. It refers to any Melanistic animal in the Panthera Genus, be it leopard tiger or jaguar.

So, in the short term, melanistic is the opposite of albino. Albino is white, melanistic is black. So, now that I've cleared that up, Ja Ne!


	2. Chapter 2

Californian Girl

Chapter Two

When Ngai woke up, the world was a fuzz and blur.

She was disoriented, and couldn't even remember her name for a few minutes, sitting there in the hazy darkness.

Then it all came rushing back.

Ngai sat up with a gasp, and cried out in pain.

The world came to a dizzying stop and sharpened.

Ngai winced.

She was in some sort of… gully.

She tried to look around, but her neck, head, and eyes screamed in protest.

A blinding white pain erupted behind her eyes.

She gasped in pain. She took deep, steady breaths, trying to slowly move each of her body parts, and eases herself into a sitting position.

She was badly injured. Her arms were scraped and oozing blood. Her hair was sticky and matted with blood. Ngai's shirt was torn, a large gash seeped from her side. Her tights were the worst off. They were ripped beyond repair, and her foot was at an awry angle.

"Not good, not good," she murmured to herself.

Her palms were rubbed raw, and she began to think about what she should do.

Should she call for help? Or just sit there?

She was beginning to sink in the dark mud, and then Ngai stopped sinking when the mud up to mid-thigh, horizontally, since she was sitting in an upright position.

'_You should be more careful child,' _A voice, _inside_ her head, purred.

Ngai yelped in pain and astonishment as she twisted her torso around to see a pure black Indochinese Tiger, with bright amber eyes, filled with amusement, staring right back at her.

The tiger had no sign of stripes, at all, and could only be identified by the way it was built and how its face looked.

"Don't eat MEEEE!" Ngai bawled.

'_Chill. I'm not. Geez.' _The pure black Tigress, as Ngai assumed by its voice, rolled her beautiful amber eyes, and began to pad her way over to Ngai, huge black paws daintily pawing the mud.

"Oh, good- wait! I'm _talking to a tiger?_" Ngai shrieked as she realized that particular fact.

'_No duh.'_

"B-b-b-b-b-ut how?" Ngai felt like she was having a circuit overload.

'_Check your palm.' _The melanistic Big Cat nosed her right palm. Ngai flinched, but then calmed. The cats nose was slightly damp and cold.

Ngai had a faint recollection of grabbing a stone when she had her dangerous tumble down the hill.

Ngai's dirt-caked fingers opened around the curled object, and the object was pleasing.

From years of training with her mother, she could tell that this stone might've been copper based, thus the milky forest green color. It has flecks of quartz inside of it, also looked like it had flecks of aventurine. It was roughly a heart shape. One side of the heart was smooth and flat-ish while the other was all tapered to a sharp point. So one side of the heart was smooth, the other could have been used as a knife or something to cut things. It was about one inch long, and half an inch wide at the widest place on the stone. It was about three centimeters in depth.

"Wow…" Ngai was speechless.

"I gotta show-YYEeEouch!"Ngai yowled in pain. The black Tigress used her nose to toss Ngai upon her back, and set off. Ngai broken and bruised body jostled painfully.

"Ow, ow…ow.." Ngai mumbled to herself with every hop, step, and bump the tigress moved over.

'_Hey, can you ease yourself into a riding position on my back?'_ The tigress asked as she slowed to a stop to allow Ngai to position herself.

"Yeah." Ngai began to slowly and excruciatingly painfully swing her leg over the tigress's back and stretched her stiff and cramped back.

"Ahhhh…" she winced as her arm cracked. The gashes began to bleed again.

'_Now hold on tight to me. Trust me,' _The big cat advised.

"Sure…. But why?" Ngai asked, confused, and took a handful of thick black tiger ruff. She leaned forward a bit and tried to squeeze her legs against the tigress's side, but to no avail, as seeing her legs were in a bad condition. She just left them dangling.

The tigress position herself in a crouching position, as is she was to leap at something. _'Hold on!'_

"Why-AAAAhhhh!" Ngai screamed.

The tigress sprouted large, feathered pure white wings, with a bit of ashy gray and most of the primary feathers were a dark black and the tips of her wings were black, and thrust her wings in the air, propelling her lithe body through the air.

When they stop gaining altitude, the tigress's wings set in a steady beat, a _whuff whuff _sound became monotonous.

The wind stopped biting at Ngai's face, and it seemed like a light breeze.

They weren't that high up, but high enough that they could skim over the tree tops of the tallest tree.

Amazingly, Ngai could breathe.

The injured girl took deep, calming breaths of the clear and invigorating air, and whooped like a Sioux warrior till' her throat was raw, ignoring the pain of her injuries.

Then she finally realized that she was flying. On a tiger. With wings.

After getting over the initial shock, she began to furrow her brow and think.

_Wow. I'm actually taking this pretty calmly. But how is this possible? Tigers don't talk. They don't fly. And the most definitely aren't black and sprout wings, _She mused to herself, rather confused.

'_Heads up. We're landing,' _the tigress warned her, dipping into a low ground-skimming flight. She buffeted her wings and kicked up the wind and air around her. She came to a stop.

Ngai felt like she was going crazy, still unsure if her tumble and hit on the head caused this hallucination.

She shook her head like a wet dog, and took in her surroundings.

The tigress landed in a small glad, with a large lake, glistening in misty light, weeping willows' boughs trailing across the ponds serene surface.

Behind them, was a tall figure of granite, with veins of pure silver running through, was towering over them , casting an immense shadow. A large stone sat on the tip of the tall mountain-like boulder, balancing, and Ngai gulped at the thought of that thing falling on her.

A patch of trees rustled.

Ngai sharply looked over to the dark woods, and saw a dark slim shadow slip through the forest, and a dark wolf-like figure trailing behind it.

The tigress, with Ngai gripped her ruff frightened, snarled and prepared to pounce. Her lips pulled back, revealing fangs, gleaming and pearly, rivaling saber-toothed tigers.

The figure emerged, and a dark haired girl with a black-and-white melanistic wolf emerged.

Ngai was shocked.

"Ngai?"

* * *

A/N: OHMAHGAWD! I'm so happy I managed to finish this! So, enjoy! R and R, please no flames, all crit will be accepted. I am a young author, and wish to improve! Please review!


End file.
